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Fires close Indonesian schools
06/10/2006 08:01 - (SA)
Jakarta - Smoke from brush-fires raging across western Indonesia forced schools to close on Friday and sent air quality plunging to unhealthy levels in much of neighbouring Malaysia, including the capital and tourist town of Malacca.
Firefighters in Indonesia said they were working 24 hours a day to douse the illegally set land-clearing blazes, while students handed out masks to protect residents from the acrid haze that has darkened skies over some 557 000 square kilometres of land.
"The conditions here are awful, really gloomy," said Sugeng, a restaurant worker in hard-hit Pontianak town on the Indonesian side of Borneo island.
Schools in the city had closed on orders of the government, he said.
The fires on Sumatra and Borneo are started by farmers or agricultural companies looking for a cheap way to clear brush land for plantations, often palm oil. They occur most dry seasons.
Only three of Malaysia's 51 air quality monitoring stations were registering clean air. Fifteen stations were in the "unhealthy" zone, including those in the capital Putrajaya and the tourist attraction city of Malacca.
Singapore's Meteorological Services Division detected nearly 200 fires and moderate to heavy smoke on Sumatra island and Kalimantan by late on Thursday, according to satellite images posted on its website.
The worst case of smoke-induced haze in Southeast Asia occurred in 1997-98. It blanketed much of the region and was blamed for losses of nearly $9bn in lost tourism, health and business costs.
Indonesia's cash-strapped government says it is trying its best to extinguish the blazes.
The fire chief in the Sumatran provincial capital of Palembang said his team of 20 men and three trucks were working nonstop, with villagers also helping the fight.
- AP
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